


Family by Blood

by editoress



Series: On Family [3]
Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Rescue, Sibling Bonding, canon compliant up to that point, post season two, rated for Scarlemagne-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editoress/pseuds/editoress
Summary: When something happens to Kipo, her siblings are ready to save her no matter the cost. Scarlemagne and Wolf go on a violent, vengeful field trip.
Relationships: Kipo Oak & Scarlemagne | Hugo, Wolf & Scarlemagne | Hugo
Series: On Family [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893013
Comments: 101
Kudos: 315





	1. Chapter 1

Something is afoot, and Scarlemagne has no idea what it is.

This ignorance finds him already in a poor mood. There are days that he is startlingly content with languishing in prison. His cell is well-furnished with an electric keyboard, a stack of books and dog-eared magazines, a fashionable change of clothes, and that blanket, lovingly folded on his cot. He has fresh air and the ability to amuse himself, and he doesn’t begrudge the surplus of time: he needs it to plan his next steps, whatever they may be. And at least twice a week, he hosts the finest guest he could ask for, even if that guest is occasionally accompanied by Lio.

On his worst days, however—of which this is certainly one—his own eagerness for company chafes at his pride. An emperor should not beg for scraps of attention like a child, he thinks, and from there his thoughts darken until even his sparse belongings can crowd the cell into claustrophobia. He has no desire to play piano, knowing he will only end up pounding the cheaply made keys in frustration. He begins to read a book and throws it across the cell less than four pages in. Mainly, he paces. At one point, he stops to glare at the notches scratched into the wood above his cot, marks he uses to keep time.

Kipo has not visited in nearly two weeks. The simple fact is that he can trace all his darkest days for being too far from the sunlight of Kipo’s endless cheer. Remembering that only sours his mood further.

Too, it’s an ominous combination. Something of note is happening, a nebulous inference based on the week-long commotion in the village below and the distracted air of his guards; and Kipo is absent. Scarlemagne find that he does not care for those two circumstances to be anywhere near each other.

The sound of guards changing shifts stirs into conversation, and Scarlemagne latches onto it at once. His only source of information these days, besides Kipo, is the occasional careless slip of a jailor. Cats, ironically, rarely hold their tongues when stirred into a temper. The voice of a Timbercat says, “Go join the perimeter after you eat.”

“But I’ve already been working all _day_!” the other protests.

“You wanna argue with Molly Yarnchopper about it? We’re all doing double duty, so quit being a kitten.”

The only response is an annoyed growl, which Scarlemagne almost echoes. Instead, he briefly smooths his composure into place. “Oh, _dear_ ,” he says loudly, with mock horror, “what could possibly frighten Timbercats away from their sixteen-hour naps?”

“Silence, prisoner!” the guard yowls, and says no more than that. Scarlemagne bares his teeth and turns away from the bars. He resumes pacing. Once again, he is isolated without the first idea of what is going on, waiting for disaster to catch him unawares.

He is dearly missing the exquisite catharsis of scaring Gerard absolutely witless when a familiar voice catches his ear. His heart lifts for the first time in ages. On the other hand, he is struck by a new annoyance that he was made to worry in the first place, and so he keeps his back to the bars as though he can’t hear her coming, which is impossible.

This petty display does not faze Kipo in the slightest. From behind him, she calls brightly, “Hi, Hugo!”

“Oh, _there_ you are!” he cries insincerely, and turns to face her. He stops dead.

She mistakes his rigid expression for accusation and hurries to say, “I am _so_ sorry. Things have been _crazy_ around here. I really wanted to see you earlier, but—uh…” She falters and steps back as Scarlemagne lunges toward her.

She isn’t fast enough. She always presses right up against the bars, unless there is a guitar involved, as if trying to wish the barrier away; and so, despite her retreat, he is just able to catch hold of her chin. He stares. That line of palest lavender is no trick of the light, no accident of makeup that can be washed off: it’s a freshly healed scar. It runs down Kipo’s cheek from just below her right eye, still puffy and, at a guess, newly free of sutures.

Kipo is beginning to wiggle, and Scarlemagne lets her go. “Who did this?” he asks in a clipped tenor.

“Oh, that,” she says with a weak laugh. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Not to worry,” he replies, his voice still dangling dangerously in his upper register, “all I need is a name.”

Her brow knits uncertainly. “Hugo, don’t—”

Scarlemagne seizes the bars, crashes against them, and snarls, “ _Who did this?_ ”

At once, a small figure elbows its way between him and his sister, and the end of a wooden staff rests just underneath Scarlemagne’s chin. He hadn’t even registered Wolf’s presence. She glares up at him in warning. He curls his lips back and growls. Without a word, the girl rights her staff and moves away, though she still watches him cautiously. In any other circumstance, he would be astonished that she backed down.

Kipo approaches him in small steps, one arm wrapped over her stomach to grasp her other elbow. He’s frightened her, and, unaccountably, he _loathes_ that. “Hugo, it’s okay,” she offers tentatively. She spreads her arms. “ _I’m_ okay. Yeah, I got hurt in a fight, but I’m fine now.” She smiles encouragingly. “So don’t worry.”

This is Kipo’s optimism at its finest. Scarlemagne’s shoulders heave with every pant, but he lets his weight settle back on his heels.

Her smile turns a little sheepish, and she gestures between them. “Besides,” she adds, “now we match.”

He exhales all at once. It is not a laugh. Very little in his wretched life has made him as sick as this, as Kipo, who is still much smaller and younger than she thinks she is, pointing out a scar in solidarity. He wasn’t much older, of course, when he was caught in the burrow’s destruction; but, he thinks somewhat hysterically, if Lio was going to do Kipo the great honor of _choosing her_ , then at the very least he ought to have ensured she stayed safe longer. This scar is unthinkable, unbearable. His sister is a child.

Kipo grabs his hand, which releases the cell bar of its own accord. “I’m okay,” she repeats. “I promise.”

He squeezes her hand in turn and manages lowly, “I see.”

She beams, obviously relieved by a response. “And,” she continues with some of her usual bubbly energy, “it was totally worth it! You’ll see! I want to tell you, but—no.” She lets him go to hold her hands up, though whether to ward off his nonexistent protests or curb her own impatience, he can’t tell. “Nope! It’s a surprise.” She gives him a grin of pure confidence. “You’re going to _love_ it. I can’t wait!”

Scarlemagne cannot return her enthusiasm, but he tries for wryness rather than desperate fury. “Another surprise, my dear? It’s really too much; you shouldn’t have.”

“This is a _good_ surprise,” she assures him. “I’m really sorry, Hugo. I should have told you I got hurt instead of showing up like that. But I’m fine now.”

Scarlemagne dredges up a smile, but he must make an awful showing of it, because she wrinkles her nose. Later, her departure is almost a relief; it means he can forgo the effort of pretending at calm. The instant Kipo turns her back, the façade drops. He stares after her darkly, entertaining thoughts with lots of blood in them.

Wolf follows, ever the silent shadow. Unexpectedly and ungracefully, as if she herself didn’t meant to do it, she stops and turns to face Scarlemagne. Her eyes are flinty, but he does not miss the way she has to work herself up to speech. “It was Doctor Emilia,” she tells him.

Scarlemagne flinches at the name, more like a kicked dog than an intelligent mute. Wolf turns away and slips after Kipo before she can fully see his panic, which is perhaps the greatest kindness she has ever done him. He paces until he can think again, at which point he sits at the piano and stares down as if he can decipher an answer from the pattern of black and white. It seems Doctor Emilia has run out of patience for biding her time. Scarlemagne hopes that something about recent events prompted her to act, be it his failed coronation or her encounter with Kipo. The other option is that after all these years, she is _ready_ : ready to pursue her original goal, to destroy civilization on the surface. To snatch the genetic rug, so to speak, out from under thousands of sapient minds.

It is a fate worse than death. Scarlemagne remembers some few things from before his mutation took effect, impressions and feelings warped by a parade of chemical side effects and overlaid with a veneer of confusion and fright. Until he had language, memory, a sense for logical processes, there was nothing concrete. He understood nothing around him until he had his mind. If the good doctor has her way, he will have nothing again—fourteen years, gone; Hugo, Scarlemagne, all of it, gone.

If there is one place he will _not_ be while Doctor Emilia makes her move on Las Vistas, it is helpless in a cage. He has been too complacent already, indulging in Kipo’s whims as usual. His early attempts to escape led nowhere; very well—he lacked appropriate motivation at the time.

This has been a lovely little interlude, but he will not miss it. His right hand lands on the first ringing chord of Chopin’s “Revolutionary Étude.”

“Act two,” he declares, and his left hand descends in a flurry of merciless notes. The electric keyboard rattles dangerously under the assault. “The return… of Scarlemagne!”

* * *

The last remaining element in Scarlemagne’s escape plan is, admittedly, a sentimental one. He doubts it will delay him overmuch, but there it is, all the same. He has forces to build, resources to gather, and strategies to design; and all of it will have to wait until after he sees Kipo.

It has been two days since he truly put his mind to the matter of escape. Kipo is due to come around at any time now, not least because, dear girl that she is, she will want to make up for her extended absence earlier. Scarlemagne is reluctant to leave until then, even if she spends the time haranguing him about forgiveness and so on. Whether or not Kipo knows it is a kind of goodbye, he will enjoy a quiet moment between them before his grand exit.

And no one is likely to miss _that_ spectacular scene. The Timbercats have fortified his cell against any attempt they could imagine a prisoner would make, but one weakness remains: it is, after all, made of wood. And he would have to be _insane_ to set it ablaze with himself inside, wouldn’t he? How fortunate, then, that he is left with dry paper books, the Tesla slugs that power the keyboard, and plenty of water to control the flames. The Timbercats are either idiots or they have an unprecedented amount of faith in his mental state. Both, perhaps.

It will be a magnificent show. Scarlemagne is eager to begin it, and so he perks up when he hears someone approaching. Footsteps ascend the stairs to his humble abode—the footsteps of more than one person. Lio’s voice precedes the duo, and Scarlemagne purses his lips. He ought to have counted on Lio throwing a monkey wrench—ha!—in his ingenious plan, even unintentionally. It’s nothing he cannot work around. The man himself reaches the platform, helping up Scarlemagne’s guest of honor with a steadying hand.

There is one other problem. His visitor is not Kipo.

He very nearly doesn’t recognize her. In his memory, Song is tall and hearty, and not only because she was so recently a colossal monkey. He remembers being at precisely the right height to press his face into her shoulder, at least on the rare occasion she stood still long enough and wasn’t in the midst of an enthusiastic explanation. This woman is wan and weary, and she is barely taller than Kipo. And yet, when she smiles and puts her hand on his shoulder, he somehow feels smaller himself. “Hugo,” she says hoarsely.

His hands are already clasped in the gesture he once used to hide his restlessness. He was always so eager to please. He composes himself enough to respond, in what is half a question, “Song.” Even his voice is hesitant and hopeful.

Her smile widens, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Okay?” she asks.

“Oh, _well_ ,” he returns dolefully, “aside from being knocked about and imprisoned?”

Song’s eyes narrow slightly, but it adds a knowing glint to her smile; there’s no anger there. “We’re… even,” she decides.

Speech seems to cost her some effort. Scarlemagne tries not to linger on the fact that the first word she thought worth saying was his name. “If you say so,” he scoffs, but he can’t quite put his heart into it. Discovering that Song lived on in the form of a mega was a giddy revelation; at the time, it was the missing piece of a thirteen-year-old puzzle. Seeing her again is wholly different. She is a sort of missing piece after all, just not in the way he first thought. Kipo will be overjoyed to know how glad he is to hear Song’s voice, assuming he decides to risk that exuberance by telling her.

Speaking of his dear little sister, she is curiously absent from this auspicious occasion, which is a shame; Scarlemagne would love to use the phrase ‘auspicious occasion’ on her just to see the face she would pull in return. He is on the brink of noting this aloud when the depth of the oddity strikes him. As much as she adores her family, Kipo would certainly be here if she could, implying that for some reason, she _cannot_.

Song’s smile fades to confusion at his silence, and Lio’s mouth tightens as though he already knows what Scarlemagne intends to ask. Scarlemagne asks it anyway, coldly. “Where is Kipo?”

The effect is instantaneous. Song grimaces as if in pain and hunches her shoulders, and at the same moment, Lio slips an arm around her, brow furrowed in worry. “Kipo…” he begins. He takes a breath and meets Scarlemagne’s icy gaze. “Kipo’s been taken.”

“ _She_ has her,” Song manages haltingly. Her hands are shaking; fur climbs her arms. Lio pulls her closer and murmurs soothingly until her breathing evens.

Scarlemagne watches this exchange dispassionately. To think that he was just starting to get maudlin. Cruel irony strikes again. Or perhaps Kipo’s foolish naivete rubbed off on him after all. “And yet,” he enunciates with laughably false calm, “here you both are. How _perplexing_.”

Lio swallows. “It all happened so fast—"

“Oh, Lio,” he croons, “that’s an _old_ one. You’ve had _ages_ to come up with a better excuse for leaving your child behind.”

Lio gives him an unusually sharp look and continues, “She didn’t transform back in time. I don’t know why. I thought she would make it out, but…” He exhales. “And now it’s complicated.”

“If we,” Song says stubbornly, “if we have to—"

Lio kisses her hair. “We won’t,” he promises. “We’ll find another way. We just… need a little more time to figure out how.”

“ _More time?_ ” Scarlemagne repeats incredulously.

Lio’s face is grim. “We don’t know how many mutes Emilia has down there, but we know it’s a lot. And there are even more humans. We have to be careful if we don’t want it to turn into a hostage situation. And Song…” He looks down at Song’s set jaw and welling tears of frustration. “If she transforms again, I don’t know if we’ll get her back. So it’s—”

It’s all just noise. Scarlemagne should have gilded this man himself when he had the chance, if only so that he would never again have to suffer his endless justifications. As for Song, if she is so very frightened of being a mute, perhaps she should not have inflicted the same fate on her child. They _left_ Kipo, _his_ Kipo, in the clutches of Doctor Emilia. Now they stand before him fretting over stratagems and casualties. It’s meaningless chatter.

Scarlemagne begins to laugh. It is high, wild, hooting laughter, and he throws his head back to shriek it into the canopy. When he faces Song and Lio again, they have retreated a step, and a smile is stretched over Scarlemagne’s face. “Oh, I _see_!” he exclaims ruthlessly. “This is a _habit_ of yours!”

“No—” Lio starts, flinching, but Scarlemagne isn’t finished yet.

“Tell me,” he continues nastily, “do you grow _bored_ with your children once they reach adolescence, or have you simply collected all the data you need by that time?”

Song starts toward him, fists clenched at her sides and eyes flashing red. She snarls like she expects to have fangs. Lio gently pulls her back. “That’s enough,” he tells Scarlemagne firmly. His face and voice soften in pity, which only infuriates Scarlemagne all the more, and he offers, “It’s going to be okay. We’re bringing her home. Song, please,” he adds quietly to his wife, and Song’s eyes darken to brown again. She lets him support her as they leave.

Scarlemagne flings himself against the bars and calls, “Yes, _do_ be careful, Song! Kipo tells me that regaining your humanity doesn’t get any easier!” He relishes the horror on their faces. He will take any indication that they are suffering for what they have done.

His schedule has just changed significantly. So be it.


	2. Chapter 2

Scarlemagne’s final interruption comes without the guise of nostalgia, for which he supposes he should be grateful. The first hint of Wolf’s approach is the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. When Scarlemagne looks up from his work, she is nearly to the cell bars, her bare feet silent on the planks. The Timbercat axe she carries gleams red in the sunset light. She stops. Her face is full of grim fury.

Scarlemagne remains were he is, kneeling on the floor by the overturned keyboard. At last, he smiles in understanding. “Why, Wolf,” he says, “I had no idea that Kipo was _your_ conscience as well.”

“Shut up,” she hisses. And then, to his bewilderment, she puts the haft of the axe between her teeth and clambers up to the roof of the cell. Four quick, precise chops sever as many bars inches from where they join with the ceiling. Wolf slides back down to the platform, where she grips one of the bars and slices it neatly away from the bottom of the frame. “Hold this,” she says in a hushed voice, thrusting the loose bar at him. When he doesn’t respond, she snaps, “Hurry up!”

This has an uncanny resemblance to a jailbreak rather than an assassination. Scarlemagne wordlessly takes the column of wood and leans it carefully against the wall. He repeats the process each time Wolf chops free another bar. In seconds, there is an opening wide enough even for Scarlemagne’s broad shoulders.

“Come on,” she orders. “We’re going after Kipo.”

“Oh?” Scarlemagne steps out into the open air, dusting off his coat. “You aren’t troubled by minor concerns such as hostages and collateral damage?”

Wolf scowls. “ _You_ aren’t. So move. We’re getting Kipo back.”

He glances over his shoulder. There is nothing of use in the cell, and certainly nothing he will miss. The blanket is already tucked into an inner pocket to protect it from the blaze, which is now a fond dream. He turns back, and only the slightest current of air on his ruff warns him to freeze. He can’t even see the axe from this angle, but he knows how close the blade is.

“And that’s _all_ we’re doing,” Wolf continues lowly. “You make one wrong move—you give me _one reason_ not to trust you—and you’re done. Got it?”

“Most assuredly,” he replies, still trying to catch a glimpse of the axe. Scarlemagne has not survived this long without being able to assess threats, and even disregarding her grotesque cloak, it’s clear that Wolf would gladly murder him. Is it a habit of Kipo’s to collect killers? He lifts a cautious hand and nudges the weapon aside. “Provided you aren’t picky about my methods.”

“I don’t care what you do,” she says, turning away. She tucks the axe neatly into her belt and stalks toward the trunk of the tree. “As long as we save her.” Without a backward glance, much less waiting for him to follow, she begins to climb. Scarlemagne takes a moment to appreciate her vicious apathy. His appreciation doubles when he peers down the stairs and finds no guard whatsoever, and no clue to their fate.

The air four feet outside his cell is no different from the air within, but it’s heady all the same. What’s more, it has been _years_ since he properly climbed. His recent ambitions may have been lofty, but they required very little in the way of actual acrobatics. He removes his boots, laces them together, and drapes them over one shoulder like an adventuring gentleman from a Burroughs novel. And then, eagerly, he ascends.

Wolf leads him up to the canopy and along a winding path of boughs, leaping from one to the next. Scarlemagne matches her speed with no trouble, which does nothing for her disposition. Conversely, the glares she shoots over her shoulder add to Scarlemagne’s delight; and the simple experience of moving freely, high above his captors, is already deliriously fun. It’s an uncomplicated, almost childish joy. He would race ahead if she weren’t so purposeful in her movements. It’s such a shame he didn’t take the time to start a fire; having everything go up in flames behind him is the only way he could think to improve matters.

Wolf loses neither speed nor altitude even after they leave the confines of the Timbercat village. She is a cautious one. Scarlemagne, too, prefers not to lose all his good sense to a burst of heroism. He vaults forward and closes the distance between them in order to be heard without giving away their presence. “I assume you have a plan?”

“Get to the lab before anyone can stop us,” Wolf replies shortly. “Benson and Dave will give us two days.”

“Meaning that they will not be joining us, I take it.”

She scowls at him, or perhaps that is simply her default expression, in the same way that Kipo smiles when her face isn’t otherwise occupied. “Just you and me, monkey,” she confirms sourly.

“Dreadful,” he muses aloud. “An invasion of two on a secure lab with at least a dozen humans, generously assuming it is an auxiliary site? On the way, we will need to speak about your resource management.”

“Shut up and keep moving.”

Scarlemagne is beginning to sense a theme with her.

The trees thin out as the forest gives way to the city proper. Wolf has obviously scouted the ideal point of descent; and to her credit, she needs no assistance as she drops from limb to lower limb, though she makes the final landing with a grunt that suggests she thoroughly rattled her teeth. Scarlemagne gleefully plummets twenty and thirty feet at a time and touches down with poise. Wolf spares him only a glance before darting off into the twilit shadows. Her night vision is no better than his, yet she sets a merciless pace through the roots and rubble. Scarlemagne is sometimes forced to move on all fours to keep his balance and dignity.

Wolf slows at last as they emerge onto a street. A sharp, clear voice cuts through the gloom to demand, “Are you serious? _This_ is who you had to go back for?”

“Quit ringing the dinner bell,” Wolf says between gritted teeth, as though she, a small child, has already grown weary of ensuring the survival of adults.

For the new voice is both mature and familiar, and as they draw closer, Scarlemagne can make out the gleam of amphibian skin. “I had a look around. We’re clear,” the voice says. “I’m not stupid. Which is exactly why I’m not giving _Scarlemagne_ a ride.”

Why, if it isn’t Kipo’s tame Mod Frog! Though perhaps Scarlemagne is in a poor position to judge anybody for being persuaded into ill-conceived notions for Kipo’s sake. “Jamack, isn’t it?” he says pleasantly, squinting against the darkness. “How lovely to see you again, so to speak.”

Jamack suggests something impolite at best and physiologically inadvisable at worst. He concludes by addressing Wolf. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but put him back.”

“Oh, my,” Scarlemagne gasps in false distress, “do you really detest me that much?” He ignores the stuttering, furious start of an accusation to continue smoothly, “Forgive me—I had assumed that your attitude at our first meeting was because you were _so_ protective of Kipo. But since you are now wasting my time, I see that you are not at all concerned with what happens to her.”

A thick silence falls. Scarlemagne strolls past the Mod Frog to investigate the great dark shape silhouetted by the one working streetlight beyond it. He runs a finger over it and finds a curving metal frame.

“You’re seriously going to rescue her?” Jamack asks dubiously.

“With or without your cooperation,” Scarlemagne assures him with a toothy smile that the frog can certainly see. At last, the streetlight catches at the right angle, and Scarlemagne marvels at the sleek black car. “Ah, and I see we will be traveling in style! Splendid. Well? Shall we?”

He is met with more silence, which he ignores in favor of the car. It’s the Mod Frogs’ favored model, and he imagines it was easy enough to liberate in the wake of their leader’s dazzling demise. He wonders if all that gold still stands as a mere monument to frogs.

Wolf asks lowly, “Do you want Kipo back or not?”

Jamack groans in audible frustration, but it is the frustration of a mute giving in. After all, he has already risked Scarlemagne’s wrath once for Kipo’s sake; certainly he can tolerate playing chauffeur for him. “ _Fine_.”

Scarlemagne claps his hands twice. “Enough dawdling, now! No time to waste!” He lets himself into the passenger seat. There is a tolerable delay before the other two join him, rocking the car heavily on what shocks remain to it. There is very little need for impact absorption on vehicles powered by living engines. At Jamack’s direction, the flies lift the car a few precious inches from the broken asphalt. He flicks the headlights on—which may or may not be fireflies; that escaped Scarlemagne’s dimly lit examination—and they are off.

They keep to the road; buildings and abandoned cars appear from the furthest reaches of the headlights and flash out of sight again without sound. At this rate, staying low and skirting various territories… well, it’s difficult to form an estimate without a clear idea of where this laboratory is. “Wolf,” Scarlemagne says thoughtfully, “I recall you said it was just the two of us.”

“It is,” Wolf replies from the backseat in pointed accusation.

Jamack snorts. “Yeah, you _really_ have the high ground here, human girl.” He half turns just to frown at her. “Look, I’m all for getting Kipo out of there, but today is _not_ the day I get devolved into a six-inch old-world frog. You wanted a getaway driver? You got one.”

Scarlemagne stiffens. Urgently, he asks, “The formula is ready?”

Jamack gives him an odd look and turns back to the road; for a long moment, he doesn’t seem inclined to answer. “I don’t know,” he admits at last. “But a lot of mutes have been disappearing. If it is…” He adjusts his grip on the steering wheel and mutters grimly, “I don’t want to be there.”

An all too understandable sentiment. Scarlemagne stares broodingly at the ever-approaching road. Abruptly, Wolf speaks up. “That’s why you’re here,” she tells him. “You have your pheromones. I’m human. We can take away their advantage.”

There is a certain logic in that. Scarlemagne smiles faintly. “I thought you enlisted me for my implacable efficiency,” he says, ignoring Jamack’s strangled noise at the descriptor, “but then again, you didn’t think to arm me with an axe.”

“You don’t need an axe, you’re a _mute_ ,” Wolf retorts stubbornly. “Just… bite them!”

Scarlemagne hums as he mulls it over. “Absolutely barbaric. Yet so very enticing.”

“Great,” Jamack puts in, strained. “You brought a wannabe dictator and an axe. What are you planning to do, clear the whole lab?”

“You got a problem with it?” Wolf snaps. There is a defensive edge to her tone, which is senseless in this case; her audience comprises two grown mutes who are perfectly aware of how the world works.

Jamack raises his hands briefly in surrender. But then he says unhappily, “Kipo’s not gonna like this.”

Wolf shifts audibly in the backseat, but her tone is all steely determination when she replies, “She’ll be alive to not like it.”

“Well said,” Scarlemagne murmurs. In any case, he is more than used to Kipo’s disapproval. Even if she does take issue with the particulars of her own rescue—which is possible, but would strike him as tremendously ungrateful—it is worlds better than the alternative. “Kipo can keep her scruples; it’s a miracle they haven’t yet gotten her killed.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Jamack says. He takes a corner; a dozen nocturnal eyes shine in the distance as they all turn toward the passing light, and then they are swallowed by the darkness. The car speeds up again, leaving the unseen figures behind. “The thing is, those scruples? They’re why you and me are alive right now.”

Scarlemagne’s lips curl back in soundless fury. He won’t deny it, in his own case; he has thought the same thing himself more than once. No, the insult is in the unearned solidarity, in speaking as if they are equals on any field. How dare this cur, this grudging, meager ally, tell him what _his sister_ wouldn’t like? The temerity of lecturing _Scarlemagne_ on Kipo’s grace! Kipo is kind to everyone, of course; but it can’t _mean_ anything to them, not really, not like it does to _him_.

The car swerves abruptly as Jamack notices the vicinity of Scarlemagne’s fangs. “Whoa, hey!”

Scarlemagne yanks the steering wheel back into place, leaning closer as he does so. “Mind the road,” he growls, “since you are of _no other use_. That is, unless you want to discover for _yourself_ whether the formula is ready—”

“We need him to get us there!” Wolf insists.

It’s a far more pragmatic argument than he is accustomed to, and it works wonders. Though it may not be strictly true—they have created no mean distance between themselves and the village, certainly enough for a head start—it reminds him that the car is an advantage. Furthermore, he pauses long enough to remember that he has more pressing punishments to mete out. Graciously, he leans back and pats Jamack on the cheek. “Keep her steady, there’s a good lad,” he says more calmly. Jamack shudders.

An uneasy quiet fills the cabin after that. It suits Scarlemagne perfectly; the unease isn’t his, after all, and so he puts his boots back on in peace. Jamack keeps wide eyes on the road, and Scarlemagne notes their route carefully, as he hasn’t traveled at street level in some while. For that matter, his usual mode of transport is parading, not skulking through the shadows.

But Scarlemagne appreciates this _one, temporary_ need to remain inconspicuous. Let it not be said he is beyond adapting—evolving, in a sense.

Jamack leaves them at the remnant of a store toward the city’s edge. Neither Scarlemagne nor Wolf makes any secret of their disdain as he departs for safer pastimes. They can hear the fading buzz of the car for over a minute; nothing stirs in this part of town. If they truly are near Emilia’s lab, then Scarlemagne can guess why.

“We have a few hours before sunrise,” Wolf says suddenly. “We should get some rest.”

Scarlemagne and his diurnal vision can hardly complain about that plan of action. He does anyway. “Lackadaisical of you, for having been in such a hurry.”

Wolf is already moving, light-footed and sure, into the threshold of the storefront. One hand brushes the haft of the axe at her hip. “Do you want to go in blind?” she shoots back. She peers into the interior for a few moments, then gestures him forward. “We just needed to make a clean getaway.” It is only because he has joined her at the door that he hears her mutter, “Besides… if they won’t go after Kipo, they definitely won’t send anyone after _us_.”

A grim assessment, but Scarlemagne agrees. Lio has learned to smile at him again only while he is caught in a cage. He and Wolf are wholly on their own.

The store has been picked completely clean, down to the bones of its toppled white shelves. Wolf moves to a far corner half barricaded by debris and free of windows or doors. Either she scouted this place herself, or she has finely honed survivor instincts. In any case, here they are, and Scarlemagne for one is glad to have the chance to take stock of himself, so to speak. Imprisonment left him with no chance to be as ambitiously athletic as he has been today, and he’s rather feeling the effects. Oh, the woes that come with the ripe age of—what is it now? Fifteen?

“No need to be so on edge,” he chides lightly. Wolf has her back to the wall, the axe at her side, and her gaze on their surroundings. “I will take first watch, you know.”

She scoffs. “So you can pheromone me in my sleep? I don’t think so.”

“Believe me,” he says sweetly, “my pheromones work perfectly while you’re conscious, too.”

She fixes an unyielding stare on him. “But do they start working faster than I can move my arm?”

“Move your—? Ah.” He glances at the axe. In truth, he doesn’t know the answer. Humans rarely have a voluntary reaction to the stuff; but he supposes that if anyone would throw their last scrap of free will into violence, it would be this half-feral slip of a girl. He smiles slightly. “And you’re willing to make that gamble, hmm?”

“Are you?” she retorts. “ _I’m_ taking watch.”

He barks a sharp, short laugh. There is _one_ person he trusts with his life, and her absence is the very reason he is in this predicament. “It seems we are at an impasse. Frankly, I’m not sure you wouldn’t take the opportunity to be done with me once and for all.”

To his surprise, she _smirks_. “Good.”

“Vicious little thing!” he exclaims appreciatively. “The company Kipo keeps can be so alarming.”

“ _You’re_ one to talk.”

Scarlemagne smiles, unfazed. “We’re family, she and I; that’s very different. What puzzles me is that _you_ , a surface human so intent on survival, should run headfirst into danger for her rescue.”

“She’s my sister.”

The statement has a tangible aftermath, during which Scarlemagne and Wolf stare at one another, both astonished at her answer. Wolf’s cheeks darken, but she stubbornly holds his gaze. At last, Scarlemagne bites out incredulously, “She’s your _what?_ ”

“That’s what she said!” Wolf hisses back. One hand goes to a pink clip in her hair.

Scarlemagne’s lip curls. “ _You?_ Her _sister?_ ”

“I am! She meant it!”

“You are _nothing_ ,” he sneers. “Kipo and I are family—we were raised by the same parents—learned the same science and music and culture. We have _history_. What do _you_ have, Wolf? A plastic trinket?”

Her whole tiny frame is wound up with spring-like tension, and she bares her teeth. “I have _Kipo_.”

“Kipo is _mine!_ ” he howls. “ _My_ sister! _My_ family! You’re nothing but a stranger she happened to be kind to—"

“I don’t care what you think!” Wolf roars back. She is on her feet in a movement too fast to follow, and, he notes, she has the axe in hand, which forces him to recalculate his odds of controlling her. “Kipo is the only family I—”

“What? The only family you have?” he mocks. “Your first sapient connection, and you think that’s all family is?”

“She’s the only family I _want_ ,” she finishes. Her young voice is rough around the edges with emotion. She swallows; he thinks she is actively refusing to cry in front of him. “I’ve had a family. They’re awful. Kipo is the only family I want—ever. I’m not going to lose her.”

Scarlemagne is silent, off-guard. What can he say, except the exact same thing, if better worded? He was willing to defend his place until Wolf reflected his own feelings back at him. He will not stand for it—it’s _unconscionable_ , the idea of a weeks-long friend claiming a place as Kipo’s sibling—but he is uncomfortable, off-balance, and considerably less eager to press the matter. He purses his lips and slowly straightens to a less menacing posture. Coldly, he says, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking this means anything to me.”

“I don’t care,” Wolf says petulantly.

He cautiously watches her settle again. Outside, the night is quiet as ever, undisturbed by their riled tempers and voices. After a time, he shrugs carelessly. “I suppose whatever will motivate you to be useful.”

She grunts. “Do you _ever_ stop talking?”

“Not since I learned how,” he replies smartly.

Wolf groans but makes no coherent reply, and thus begins their long wait. Aged linoleum is all the comfort their hiding place has to offer. True to their word, neither of them sleeps. They are watching for the first hints of light to lead them to Kipo.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the violence rating kicks in. In COMPLETELY unrelated news, Scarlemagne has a great time here.

The crumbling Las Vistas skyline makes odd shapes of the sunrise, throwing the morning’s first rays through whatever gaps it can find. Golden light shines at the tops of the tallest trees as if they are hundred-foot candles. The rest is predawn shadow, hazy remnants of the previous night clinging to cement walls and tree roots. Wolf keeps to that lingering darkness as she leads the way to a dumpster, precariously perched on the slope of some broken, upturned pavement that is so often the mark of a mega’s passing. She jumps onto the dumpster without hesitation, crouching with her toes curled over the edge. Scarlemagne is somewhat more delicate about where he puts his weight.

Wolf points past the curve in the road, where the ghost of human infrastructure gives way to nature’s merciless growth—with one exception. Part of a building, half-buried at the bottom of a shallow valley, is just visible between the trees. “There.”

Scarlemagne leans this way and that, gauging the terrain. The ground around the compound seems relatively clear, which puts it, more or less, in a bowl rimmed with high vantage points. It is the textbook definition of defensible, the most practical possible option—and therefore laughably obvious. “Let’s see,” he murmurs with growing anticipation. “If I had just such a base of operations and were to post lookouts—"

“Treetops,” Wolf concludes. She drops to the ground and takes off running.

He releases a disgusted sigh. “No sense for the moment whatsoever,” he grouses. But she is right, and so he follows.

By that tacit agreement known as good sense, they keep their approach quiet. But they need not have put so much effort into stealth; their first victim has his back to them, watching the clearing by which anyone would have to approach the compound. Doctor Emilia’s iron grip on her subordinates is slipping, or perhaps she is that desperate for assistants. This one gave away his position by yawning loudly and scratching his leg.

Scarlemagne presses for speed. The tree limbs grow close and thick here, and he ascends as easily as walking. He is standing upright in front of the human, perfectly balanced even in boots, before the man has so much as flinched at his sudden appearance. Scarlemagne smiles toothily and says, “Hello.”

The human startles to his feet. Just as quickly, Wolf emerges from the leaves and bramble like the predator she wears. She grasps the man’s gas mask by the filter and pulls it off with such force that his head snaps back and bounces off the tree trunk. It is by no means a debilitating blow, but it is all the opening Scarlemagne needs. Carelessly, he swipes his hand through the damp fur under his chin and flicks sweat at the man’s dazed face.

Wolf dives to the side just in time to avoid the effects. She clings to a nearby branch, dangling for a moment before she climbs to a more dignified position. “I wasn’t clear!” she seethes.

Scarlemagne doesn’t spare her a glance. He is watching the facial contortion that signals the transformation from wily human to personal servant, a sort of rigor mortis of the free will. “Oh, don’t fuss; you’re all right. Charles,” he adds graciously to their eager new ally, “tell her she’s all right.”

Charles looks blankly between them for a moment, but says obediently, “You’re all right.”

“There! Now _that’s_ settled—” He pats Charles’ shoulder. “Sit down, my good man! Don’t strain yourself. We have _so_ much to catch up on.”

Scarlemagne and Wolf spend the better part of a half hour questioning Charles on the compound, its security, and Kipo’s situation. It will take some effort to get in without raising the alarm at once, but his answers are promising; and as impatient as Scarlemagne is, he wants those answers more than he wants to put his teeth into someone right this instant. But only just.

Wolf has not relaxed her guard, even as Charles babbles all his answers in a pliant rush, gaze blank. “How long does this stuff last?” she asks.

“Long enough,” Scarlemagne answers airily.

“We can’t just leave him here. I won’t risk it.”

“Oh, I agree. Are we done, then? I for one am satisfied about our chances.” He gestures Charles to his feet. “Charles, I have one more _tiny_ little favor to ask.”

Charles stands with mechanical stiffness, his features pulled tight in an empty smile. “Yes, sir.”

“Good man. Don’t scream,” Scarlemagne tells him, “on the way down.” He puts a hand on Charles’ shoulder and leans in to whisper confidentially, “We are trying to be discreet.”

He pushes; it takes almost nothing. Emilia’s minion topples over, knocks against a branch fifteen feet down, and passes silently through the cool morning air until he hits the ground with a wet crunch.

Oh, how Scarlemagne has _missed_ that sound.

Wolf stares at the crumpled body far below. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is a thin, grim line. But the brief shock on her face hardens into guarded anger when she sees Scarlemagne’s raised brow. “There’s still one more,” she says shortly. “I’ll get them.”

“I suppose it isn’t fair for me to have all the fun,” Scarlemagne agrees pleasantly. He sits daintily in the place recently vacated by the lookout. “Go on, then. Remember that Kipo can’t afford our mistakes.”

She shoots him a more familiar look full of venom. He smiles pointedly back, but she is already gone. Scarlemagne turns his consideration to the compound below.

There’s only one sensible way in. They haven’t the time or the foreknowledge to attempt the underground entrance, which leads to the vast tunnel network connecting the burrows. The service hatch on the roof opens directly into the chamber in which Kipo is being held, but they would be going in blind—drawing immediate attention without having the first idea of whose arms they were walking into. No, the one acceptable option is the only ground entrance, which they can very probably stroll into unobserved.

On that note, a sharp whistle draws his attention downward to Wolf. She is standing on the ground, a safe distance from the body of the lookout. She makes the most unwelcoming follow-me gesture he has ever seen. He obliges.

“Move it, monkey,” she says just before he lands beside her.

“Monkey, monkey, monkey,” he sighs. Wolf ignores him. He matches her stride easily as they move toward the compound. “Will you ever address me properly?” He points at her warningly and adds in a lower voice, “By my _real_ name—if I ever hear you utter—”

Wolf knocks his hand aside. “Don’t worry, I know better.” She attempts to outpace him without breaking into a run. “I don’t even know why you let Kipo call you that.”

Like the structure of scales, this is not something for which Scarlemagne has ever considered there might need to be an explanation. “It… amuses her to call me Hugo,” he replies carefully.

“It doesn’t _amuse_ her,” Wolf shoots back. Her brief glare is a mix of affront and incredulity. “She believes it. She really believes you’re Hugo, not Scarlemagne.”

Scarlemagne slows, a fact Wolf gladly takes advantage of. He is faced with two possibilities, neither of which he cares for overmuch. It is possible that Kipo’s regard for him, that one anchor (so to speak) which has kept his mind and emotions from spinning toward anything but fiery, murderous rage, is based on an illusion of Kipo’s optimism. In short, that she loves something only she can see, some invented Hugo he has never been. But the alternative, that his sister is right, is absurd. He’s _Scarlemagne_ , emperor in the making. He hasn’t _changed_. Has he?

 _Hasn’t_ he?

It hardly matters. Wolf is waiting puzzledly for him at the entrance, and Kipo is inside. Wolf has uncovered the concealed keypad—he would expect nothing less of a scavenger—and she waits for his short nod to enter the combination Charles so generously provided. The door responds with an audible click; the depth of the sound suggests something like a vault door.

Scarlemagne gestures grandly with a bow and a smile. “Ladies first,” he says, all gallant.

“Yeah, right,” she snorts. With pure force of will, for he couldn’t have imagined she had the muscle for it, she pries the door open. It swings arduously over the sandy ground, and the entryway yawns open before Scarlemagne. Wolf prods him in the back with the butt of the axe. “ _You_ go in first.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in my performance as a living shield,” he remarks lightly. The entry hall is barren but for rows of boots and cloaks. There is a little noise from the rooms beyond, but nothing to suggest an immediate human presence. “Offense is more my forte.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“No doubt.” He cranes his head around to examine the place as he passes further into the compound. He has seen a burrow in lockdown before, and these slots in the walls and ceiling look just right for dropping metal barriers across the hallway. That could be tremendously inconvenient.

Wolf appears to be thinking along the same lines. She overtakes him at a jog. “We should hurry—”

She runs headlong into a human emerging from a side room.

It is no surprise that Wolf bounces; she’s small, and the woman with a lab coat draped over one arm and a stub of a cigarette in her other hand is easily thrice her size. For all that, the collision stuns the woman longer than Wolf. She stares down, mouth opening and closing, and nearly lets the cigarette burn her fingers. Wolf is back on her feet in a moment and, more than that, leaps through the air. The butt of the axe cracks against the scientist’s temple. The woman crumples gracelessly face-down without having had time to utter a sound.

Wolf stares hard at her for a few seconds, panting. Scarlemagne eyes the scene disdainfully. “My dear,” he says with exaggerated patience, “I hate to intrude on someone else’s vengeance, but you’ve used the wrong end of the axe.”

“It’s fine.” Wolf is already moving on.

“Do you have any idea how long people stay unconscious?” he asks irritably. “It isn’t very.”

“Then drug her!” Wolf shoots over her shoulder.

“ _Ugh_ ,” he says, with feeling. The scientist is already beginning to groan. He grips her chin, puts the toe of his boot on one shoulder, and pulls until something snaps free. She falls limp and silent and makes no protest when he nudges her corpse back into the adjoining room.

“I hate having to do that,” he complains upon rejoining Wolf. “It’s so anticlimactic.”

“No one made you.” It’s a testament to their forced familiarity that he knows she is speaking through clenched teeth, though he can’t see her face.

“Tut, tut.” He tilts his head to peer down at her critically. “You _have_ gone soft after all. I’m almost impressed you fooled me into thinking you were an _actual_ threat.”

Wolf doesn’t face him for a moment; when she does, she looks less angry than victorious. “Kipo didn’t have to hurt anybody to beat _you_.” She flashes a bright, proud, vicious smile. “Maybe you need to reconsider what a threat is.”

“Kipo,” he murmurs, “is the exception, not the rule. In any case, is it too much to ask that you be a threat to _her_ enemies?”

“I am,” Wolf says darkly. She grips the axe in both hands. “But the important thing—the most important thing is saving Kipo.”

Scarlemagne is willing to let that go without a repartee, which is just as well; they take a turn into a tiled corridor lined with alternating doors and wide, rectangular windows. Scarlemagne knows the like at once, except, of course, he was usually looking at it from inside one of the enclosures. There is very little question of what he will find inside these, but he looks through each window regardless. The mutes are separated out by species, kept two and sometimes three to an enclosure. The accommodations are decidedly lacking: suitable for old-world animals in pens and stables, perhaps, but not for any of the civilized beings currently held captive. There is no doubt that this entire compound is for the purpose of furthering Emilia’s original goal.

“My kingdom for a vial of hummingbird nectar!” he mutters.

“You don’t have either,” Wolf returns, though she sounds uneasy herself. “Figure it out.”

When he has had enough, Scarlemagne picks up the pace, only glancing to each side. Several of the mutes noticed his passing and either shrank away or came up to the window, hopeful. There’s no help for that, but he need not linger long enough to let them make a fuss about it.

It is Wolf, surprisingly, who slows them down. “What are those?” she asks in an urgent half whisper.

Her tone is such that Scarlemagne backtracks to where she stands frozen before one of the windows. In this enclosure are a handful of tiny mammals. They scurry around the room on all fours with blank black eyes, unclothed and unknowing. And they are small—so very small, only a little longer than a foot from nose to bushy tail.

They are animals, nothing but animals. She’s done it.

“Those are squirrels, Wolf,” Scarlemagne intones.

“Those?” Wolf chokes out. “But—” For all her growling against mutes, there is nothing in her face to suggest she is realizing she could hold one of these creatures in one hand and crush it with less. There is nothing to suggest anything but confusion and horror. Something of Kipo has rubbed off on her, perhaps, more than he first assumed.

“All the more reason to hurry,” he reminds her lowly.

The rest of the corridor holds more results of the formula, old-world animals or, worse, mangled creatures clinging to the shape of mutes. Scarlemagne takes no more time to examine them; he knows all that he needs, which is that the one fear that continued to haunt him even after he embraced his power has been realized.

He throws open the waiting set of double doors, and there is Kipo.

Scarlemagne stands at the threshold of a small control room. Altogether, it is little more than a fortified box with a worn chair and a panel showing a handful of green indicators around the number one hundred twenty-one. A narrow door is cut from the wall on one side. The room is lined with windows that look out into the larger chamber beyond, an open space two or three stories high. It has obviously been hastily cleared out, with boxes and desks shoved into the corners. And in the middle of this chamber, a mega jaguar bends at an odd angle to get her teeth around the cable connecting her collar to the floor.

Rather than relief, renewed anger thrills through him at the sight. He looks again at the monitor with its number, which has shifted slightly higher. One of the indicators is blinking in a steady rhythm.

“ _Kipo!_ ” Wolf darts past him and pushes through the side door. She is sprinting single-mindedly. “Kipo!”

Kipo lets go of the cable and jerks upright. Her ears swivel wildly for a moment before she spots Wolf. She bounds toward the girl and ducks down to put her head close to the floor, straining the length of the cable. The number on the panel has gone up again.

It’s a heart rate monitor. And that—he prods at some of the indicators and control options—that is a voltage setting. And here again, this is a parameter for automatic application, at what point a shock should be administered by the system.

One reason to use a cable rather than a sturdy, old-fashioned chain is to run electrical wires safely through its length. On a related note, one way to keep a human-mute hybrid restrained with nothing but a large collar is to ensure she never becomes small enough to escape that collar.

Kipo lies as flat as she can against the concrete floor with her tail curled close against her, as if she can fit herself into Wolf’s arms. Wolf has thrown herself against the giant muzzle and buried her face in pink fur. She turns her head to shout, “What are you waiting for? Let her out!”

“I am trying,” he says crossly. “And I’ll remind you that between the two of us, I’m the one who can use a computer.” Though this one is giving him the runaround. One would think that clinging to the final threads of civilizations would stop humans from updating their operating systems. Or perhaps it is grimmer than that: perhaps Kipo was never meant to be released.

It is tempting to smash Doctor Emilia’s delicate equipment for pure frustration and the spite of the thing, but he would much rather direct that energy at the doctor herself. He takes another route. “Kipo,” he calls, emerging from the control booth, and he is strangely affected by the hopeful way her attention fixes on him, how as a mega she can look as frightened as he has ever seen her. Her scar remains even in this form. “I’ve disabled the system for now. You will have to change back, and quickly.”

Wolf straightens, though she keeps both hands on Kipo’s snout, almost defensively. “Why not just—”

“Don’t you think that if there were a release, _I would have found it?_ ” Scarlemagne snarls. “Do you suppose I don’t know _precisely_ how these cages function?”

Wolf stares at him, visibly checking her reaction. When she does speak, her voice is no more heated than a complaining grumble. “Stop it. Kipo has to be calm right now.” She turns to Kipo and murmurs indistinctly; the words come haltingly but in a soothing tone he wouldn’t have guessed her capable of. Kipo listens, ears pointed raptly forward, and softly rumbles. Scarlemagne turns away, simmering with envy and uselessness.

The click of a door latch echoes carelessly around the chamber.

Wolf is already shouting, “Scarlemagne!” as he turns. Not twenty feet from them, frozen just inside the chamber, is Doctor Emilia.

She has changed very little, her appearance still all ice and hard lines, but the filter of young memory has given way to truth; and the truth is that she is just a slender woman, a little shorter than him. It is even more obvious in her moment of fear, white-faced and white-knuckled. Scarlemagne’s mouth begins to curl into a smile. Here she stands, the looming nightmare of his childhood: only a small, weak, fragile human. It would be nothing to tear her apart.

“With pleasure!” he howls, laughing.

Emilia drops her clipboard and flees. Scarlemagne gives chase, spurred by manic energy and sustained, ironically, by the relentless drills he endured at the doctor’s hands. Emilia is a fine sprinter for a human, but Scarlemagne is fast, inhumanly fast. For months he did nothing but run and run and run, and now he _flies_ through the hallways, gaining on her with every stride.

Emilia grips a doorframe to swing inside a room. For a brief moment, he cannot see her; he hears the mad scramble of glass and metal tools clattering together, and then he is through. Emilia holds a syringe in one hand while the other knocks vials aside in a cabinet. But she gets no further than that in her defense. Scarlemagne unleashes a wild mandrill scream and knocks her to the ground. She topples; her head knocks audibly against the floor. Scarlemagne crouches over her, watching her eyes roll dazedly.

He begins to laugh. He laughs in her face, a hooting show of teeth, deliriously triumphant. It cuts off abruptly when she begins to struggle, albeit groggily. All business, he brushes his fingers over his forehead and shakes loose the pheromone-filled droplets directly under her nose. He stands to straighten his coat and run his hands over his fur while she twitches and then falls still. Her hard, cunning face is blank.

Scarlemagne adjusts his cravat. “There’s no time for idleness, Doctor,” he says. “Get up.”

Doctor Emilia stands without question. He smiles broadly. “There we are,” he croons. “Isn’t it a lucky thing that you trained me so well for races? Hmm?”

“It’s very lucky,” she says.

“Isn’t it just,” he agrees. He paces around her in a slow circle. “Otherwise we couldn’t have this delightful chat. I wonder if you could do me a little favor, Doctor.”

“Of course.”

“Kipo has a scar on her face.” Scarlemagne stops in front of her, eyes glittering. “I would like you to show me precisely how you gave it to her.” He turns her face to the side with a finger, examining her unmarred cheek. “A demonstration, if you will. An _exact_ demonstration.”

Emilia is silent for a moment; but a mind flooded with pheromones can take time to process nuance. At last, she says, “I can’t.”

“ _Can’t?_ ” he repeats, aghast.

“I don’t have my hunting knife.”

His vision tinges with red, but a thin, sharp-edged veneer of politeness remains on his tone. “Of _course_ ,” he replies silkily. “How _silly_ of me. You haven’t got your _hunting knife_.” He plucks up a surgical scalpel and holds it out to her. “Don’t fret over the details, Doctor. This will do just fine.”

Emilia takes it wordlessly and goes to a small mirror hanging on the wall. With calculated precision, she settles on the initial position of the blade, presses, and begins to drag it downwards. Blood wells up at once and runs down her cheek in a thick, crimson river. Head wounds always bleed so profusely. He should know.

Her breath is coming short when she finishes her work. The collar of her shirt is soaked red, and sweat beads on her forehead. Scarlemagne doses her liberally with more pheromone to offset the adrenaline. The tightness in her expression calms somewhat, and she smiles even as her eyes continue to produce tears.

“Now,” he says, pointing lazily at the floor beneath them, “run in place.”

Emilia complies at once. Her movements are sluggish; she is pale and out of breath already. Scarlemagne clicks his tongue. “You can do better than that, Doctor,” he chides. “Put some _gumption_ into it. Knees up!” She improves her form, such as she can. It won’t be so very long now before her body fails her. “That’s the spirit.” He leans closer, watching her already thin face turn deathly. He recites, with the precise wording and cadence that he remembers, “Weakness will not be tolerated. There will be no breaks. I will tell you when to stop; until then, you run.”

She nods breathlessly. He doses her again to ensure that it will be far too late by the time she escapes its effects. He can hardly look away from the sight she makes: Doctor Emilia, would-be destroyer of the surface and personal tormentor, her will crushed under his heel like so much ancient rust. She is nothing, and he _wins_.

There are too many footsteps.

More sets of footsteps echo Emilia’s from outside, and the noise is too heavy to stem from two young girls. An unfamiliar voice shouts. Scarlemagne turns and sees a gas mask. Something stings his shoulder, sudden and cold. Emilia continues to jog in place behind him, gasping for breath, but the sound is fading strangely.

He is falling. Everything goes black.


	4. Chapter 4

Scarlemagne awakens in a cage. Reinforced plexiglass, he would wager. Hermetically sealed to remove the threat of pheromones. The cage has been set up in a large room that nonetheless looks like a closet compared to the main chamber Kipo was kept in. These details come with great difficulty; his vision is blurry, and his temples feel as though they are in a vise. He groans and presses a hand to the top of his head, possibly to keep it on.

“Hugo! You’re okay!” Kipo’s worried and very human face appears at an odd angle. “Please be okay. Say something?”

Scarlemagne gathers that he is not upright, as such, and sluggishly corrects that. Kipo gives him a helpful push; it jostles his headache. She is leaning forward anxiously, and he pieces together an answer for her. “I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean,” he manages.

“ _Ohhh_ thank goodness,” she sighs in an exhale so profound it deflates her entire frame. She leans away and slumps against the transparent wall. Her exhaustion only becomes more apparent as his wits return to him. She is listless and bleary-eyed, even moreso than he feels. She looks disconcertingly unlike herself, her brightness gone, as though she hasn’t smiled in ages. Scarlemagne can’t say whether this is more or less devastating than seeing her scarred.

“Kipo,” he begins, gently.

She pauses in rubbing her eyes with both hands and looks up at him in just the same way she did as a collared mega, except that now he can better read her expression. It’s a familiar one. Scarlemagne, too, has watched someone in the hopes they will say that there is still a way out. It has been a long, _long_ time, but the similarity of circumstance rattles loose those memories.

Wolf is watching him, too, but her emotions are inscrutable. They are certainly _present_ in her furrowed brow and quick, assessing glances, but he can only guess at something adjacent to caution. “You’re still…” She hesitates, frowns uncomfortably, and concludes, “You?”

The tentative tone throws him. He raises a brow. “It would appear so. Disappointed?”

The girl scowls furiously, which immediately puts them on more familiar ground. “If you’ve still got a brain,” she bites out, “then _where were you_?”

Those final words are bitterly sharp with accusation—an impudent manner to take with such an obvious question. Scarlemagne narrows his eyes. “Dealing with the good doctor,” he replies with exaggerated patience. It is a difficult act with a headache. “For which, by the way, you are welcome.”

“How long could it take you to _deal with_ one human?”

“What happened?” Kipo puts in with considerably less vitriol. “We thought you’d be back….”

His expression darkens. “We had a lot to catch up on, she and I.”

“I knew it,” Wolf sneers. “Why do mutes always play with their food?”

Scarlemagne’s lip curls in an answering snarl. “I have been waiting _thirteen years_ for this—!”

“I don’t care!” Wolf’s arm snaps out to point—at the concrete room that holds the cage, at the compound beyond. “You should have just killed her and moved on, like the others!”

In the ensuing quiet, it is impossible to miss Kipo’s horrified gasp. Scarlemagne does not look at his sister; he is too infuriated that Wolf would use his justified tactics as some sort of leverage, here and now, after agreeing to overlook them for Kipo’s sake. His voice lowers dangerously. “What concern is it of yours? I bought you all the time you could want to escape. What’s _your_ excuse?”

“Kipo wouldn’t leave without you!”

Scarlemagne recoils, his temper extinguished. It should be an impossible notion, but he is thinking: of course; of course she wouldn’t. It isn’t in Kipo’s nature. Until very recently, it wasn’t in _his_ nature to accept the possibility of willing dedication. This loyalty is a strange answer to Lio’s betrayal. Stranger still is the part of him that is appalled rather than touched. _Must_ his dear sister have _so_ little sense of self-preservation?

Kipo has pulled her knees closer to her chest, and she toys anxiously with the hems of her leggings. “Hugo,” she asks, voice wavering, “did you really… kill people?”

He purses his lips over clenched teeth. In his most reasonable and reassuring voice, he replies, “We came to _rescue_ you, Kipo—from humans who are planning to destroy civilization as we know it, remember.”

“Oh, no, no, _no_ ,” she groans, pressing her hands to the sides of her head.

Scarlemagne heads off her moral dilemma with a stern tone. “Kipo, they _caged_ you—”

“I know!” she yells, flinging her hands out in vexation. It is a brief spark of her usual energy. “I _know_ they’re bad, and I haven’t slept in like three days, and they’re doing something awful to mutes but I can’t see what it is.” She scrubs the back of her hand over her eyes, and this time she brushes away tears. “But that doesn’t mean I want them to _die_. Especially not for _me_.”

It’s not remorse that he feels, precisely; remorse would imply that he did not deeply enjoy what has actually been a very subdued and private exacting of vengeance, and oh, he has loved every bloody tally on his side of the scoreboard, especially where Doctor Emilia is involved. And yet _something_ unpleasant settles in his chest at Kipo’s misery. He cannot help but think that real anger would be more bearable; as it stands, he says nothing.

“We’re sorry,” Wolf puts in.

Scarlemagne narrows his eyes warily at the girl, but despite the fact that she inconveniently refused to kill anybody, her apology gives every indication of being sincere. Furthermore, rather than press the advantage in standing, she gives Scarlemagne a prompting, albeit impatient, look.

He exhales quietly. All he will admit is this, softly and with wry frankness: “Not all of us have your genius for pacifism, dear sister.”

Kipo sniffles. “Ugh,” she says, with feeling. She rubs her cheeks dry and seems to come back to herself a little. “Thanks. I just want to go home without hurting anyone.” She takes a deep breath and, with a more direct, Kipo-esque manner, adds, “I really, _really_ want to go home.”

“You will,” Wolf promises. “We’ll figure something out.” She breaks into a cocky grin, which Scarlemagne finds startlingly charming. “We _always_ figure something out.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Kipo agrees, and the enthusiasm in her voice is not as important as the fact that she smiles for the first time since they found her in this nightmarish place. She takes Wolf’s hand and, without hesitation, turns and grabs Scarlemagne’s, too. “I’ve got my brother and sister right here. Emilia doesn’t stand a chance!”

Scarlemagne has not forgotten Wolf’s audacity in weaseling her way into Kipo’s family; but at just this moment, it’s rather worth suffering the insult to have Kipo in recognizable good spirits. He squeezes her hand.

For all that, their immediate escape is unlikely. Wolf’s sense of direction places them further back in the compound, closer to the tunnels than to the surface entrance. None of them can noticeably damage the plexiglass, and just trying rather frays Scarlemagne’s nerves; he dislikes the animal panic intrinsic in pounding on glass, having done it before. Kipo could certainly destroy the cage in her transformation, but Scarlemagne and Wolf hurriedly veto the idea.

“Fine,” Kipo grouses. She stares at her hands for a moment and sighs, “That’s probably better anyway. I’ve never been mega that long before. I don’t want to get…” She grimaces. “Stuck.”

“We’ll be here,” Wolf assures her, but Scarlemagne knows it will take more than that if Kipo loses herself. Returning to her human form has been no easy task for Kipo in the best of circumstances. Now, when she is afraid, sleep-deprived, and too accustomed to existing as a mega, there is no guarantee she will return at all. Regardless, Scarlemagne tells her the same. He will not promise less than Wolf.

Kipo sleeps sporadically for perhaps an hour. It is painfully obvious that she fears being caught off-guard yet can hardly resist her exhaustion. But she jolts fully awake the moment Doctor Emilia enters.

Scarlemagne delights in the doctor’s appearance. He may have miscalculated regarding their confrontation, but it proved that she was no omnipotent monster, only flesh and blood, which Scarlemagne is very practiced in parting when it serves him. Emilia moves slowly and laboriously enough that they have ample time to observe her, and her assistant, a burly young man wielding a length of pipe, does not appear too keen to do anything but trail behind her. She is as pallid as her pristine lab coat, and the shadows under her eyes are bruised blue. Nearly half her face is taken up with layers of bandages taped over the gash on her cheek. Scarlemagne hopes it scars horribly. Kipo takes only a moment to grasp the implications; she touches her own scar and her eyes grow wide and round as dinner plates.

“You look tired, Doctor,” Scarlemagne notes with syrupy false sympathy. “Do you need to sit down?”

The doctor gives him a cold look, and just like that, he has ensured she will remain standing for the entire interview, despite the fact that her breathing is already strained. “Worry about yourself,” she advises him. “Your tactics, for instance.” She offers a smile which resembles nothing so much as the scalpel he handed her earlier. “Maybe next time, taunt less. Act more.”

Needless to say, he would _love_ to, and his toothy grin conveys as much. “If you insist.”

Kipo is frowning stubbornly, but her voice is earnest when she says, “Emilia, you don’t have to do this.”

Scarlemagne cannot imagine how this approach could possibly work with anyone, much less Emilia; but this, too, is part of Kipo’s nature. As expected, Emilia brushes her off curtly. “I’m not here to go over this with you again.”

“What _are_ you here for?” Wolf demands.

“Sorting inventory,” Emilia replies with a wry half-smile, as though it’s a private joke. Scarlemagne, unfortunately, understands the punchline, and she well knows it. She points to him first. “There’s no question the formula will work on you,” she says. “We made sure of that. You saved us a lot of trouble by showing up.”

“Leave him alone!” Kipo shouts. Unexpectedly, she grabs his shoulder and uses it to pull herself to her feet. Claws prick him through his coat; fur shudders along Kipo’s limbs in uncertain flashes. The effect reminds him of Song’s involuntary reactions the day before, and it chills him. Song was recovering from over a decade of confinement in her mega form; Kipo has been here for mere days.

Emilia eyes her, unconcerned. “Go ahead,” she says lightly. “Find out whether transforming in there will crush your friends.”

Kipo’s jaguar features recede somewhat. She screws her eyes shut, but despite her efforts, she remains not entirely human. Emilia watches this struggle with cool interest. “I’m curious to see what the formula will do to _you_ ,” she tells Kipo. “We have some theories, but Lio and Song were pretty careless. We’ll only run tests once you’re no longer useful, of course.”

“Oh, I am gonna be _so_ useless to you,” Kipo threatens through gritted teeth.

“We’ll see.” Emilia’s gaze flicks to Wolf. “I don’t need that one.” She half turns to her assistant over her shoulder. “Get rid of her.”

“ _No!_ ” Kipo cries. She lunges the instant the man opens the door, but he swings the pipe with enough force to knock her backward into Scarlemagne. Wolf takes advantage of the distraction to squeeze past him and bolt out into the open, but Emilia catches hold of her; and for all her prowess, Wolf weighs less than the smallest Humming Bomber. She twists in the doctor’s grasp, shrieking with fury.

Kipo rights herself and leaps forward again. She catches the enclosure door just before it closes. The assistant puts his back against it and tries with all his might to push it to. “Wolf!” Kipo calls, straining. “ _Wolf!_ ”

Scarlemagne takes a single step to join her, and then suddenly there isn’t room. Kipo is taking up too much space; her arms are massive and her feet are clawing at the floor through her shoes; and Wolf’s name has turned into a wordless snarl. “Kipo, _no_ —” Scarlemagne begins, sharp and shrill.

The force of her transformation knocks the breath out of him, or perhaps it is slamming into the plexiglass that does it. The enclosure shatters.

Scarlemagne lies dazed, struggling to draw in air. A cacophony shakes the room: a roar he can feel in his chest, the shriek of rent concrete, Emilia snapping, “Stay back! Stay _back!_ ” Bits of plexiglass dig into his face. At last, he coughs harshly, and his lungs are gracious enough to function again. He stumbles to his feet and looks upon the chaos.

Emilia and Wolf are gone. It isn’t difficult to infer in which direction; Kipo is throwing all her might at a doorway many times too small for her. The mega jaguar barely fits the confines of the room; her shoulders brush the ceiling when she straightens, and her tail nearly reaches the opposite wall, along which the terrified assistant is easing toward the other door.

The assistant can wait. “Kipo!” Scarlemagne bellows. “Kipo, enough!”

She pays him no mind; there is not even an indication she heard him. She roars in frustration at the doorway, and the sound is nearly a physical force. The assistant darts for the far door in a panic. The movement catches Kipo’s attention. Almost too quickly to follow, she turns and swats the human with a paw the size of a truck. He flies through the air to crash against the concrete wall and collapses, unmoving. Scarlemagne stares at what is almost certainly another corpse.

He has wished, more than once, that Kipo were a little more practical, a little less dangerously compassionate to her enemies. But he cannot fathom this, not from _her_.

He understands when she turns back, winding and unwinding with feline grace to change directions in the small space, and pins him with a gaze that is entirely mega predator. The huge, slit-pupiled eyes are wild and angry. He cannot see his sister there at all. “Kipo?” he says, in a terribly small voice.

Snarling, she bounds toward him. Scarlemagne dives for the remnants of the enclosure’s frame and stays curled there as she moves over and past him. Her paws land a thunderous blow against the wall, but it does not give. She darts back to first one door, which she claws at viciously, and then to the other, yowling, heedlessly close to trampling him. Her tail lashes wildly in agitation.

“Kipo, stop it!” he shouts. But she spins around with quick aggression only long enough to locate the source of the noise; then, with a growl, she returns to attacking the walls in mindless rage. Scarlemagne allows himself a single curse word, heartfelt and distinctly enunciated, because he feels the situation calls for it, and clearly Kipo isn’t listening anyway.

It is possible that Kipo would not attack him if he tried to leave. He certainly won’t survive a frenzied mega for much longer. And yet Kipo herself will never escape in this state, and even if she does, he is not convinced he will ever truly see his sister again.

There is only one thing that has the slightest chance of working. Scarlemagne prides himself in his schemes, but this one is humiliating and unlikely at best. If asked earlier, he might have said he would die first; but now that is a very real option, and Kipo may be lost besides.

He steadies his shaky breathing, no easy feat while mere yards from a mega trying to tear apart a wall. He has no advantage here—but he does have something, even if it is something he loathes. “We may not have sunshine,” he gasps. The words are reedy and tuneless, and even a mega jaguar’s hearing could not have caught them over the noise. _Oh, come now!_ he thinks. He did not nearly become emperor by not knowing how to _project_. He takes a deep, even breath, tensing with every shift in Kipo’s weight. At last, he manages to half-sing, “We may not have sunshine, or starlight or weather…”

She turns abruptly again, and he flinches. When he survives the next few seconds unscathed, he continues in a long-forgotten tenor, “But we’ve got each other, and that’s even better. You don’t need the sun—” She turns toward him fully, still growling softly, pupils nearly blacking out her irises. She stalks closer, low to the ground. Scarlemagne swallows. “—to keep your warm when you’ve got arms. Kipo?” Her ears flick and her teeth show, alarmingly close. He throws up an arm, in part to reach out to her and in part to fend her off. He’s fairly certain that his pounding heartbeat could pass for vibrato. He wants to _run_. Instead, he sings tightly into the silence, “Wishes come from you and not a random shooting star.”

Even half-crouched, the mega looks down at him. Scarlemagne closes his eyes. If Kipo is still in there, perhaps she will show him the kindness of biting him clean through on the first try. “We may not have storm clouds….”

So quietly and hoarsely that he thinks that he imagined it, or possibly that he is dead, Kipo’s voice sings, “But the sky’s always blue.”

His eyes snap open, and he is neither dead nor mad; there she is, sitting sprawled on the floor as though she fell rather than transformed. Kipo grins and waves weakly. She takes a moment to get to her feet, but it doesn’t matter; Hugo is already there, scooping her up into an embrace. She wraps her arms tight around his middle. “I knew you knew our song,” she says into his shoulder.

Of course that is the first thing she would remark upon after tearing about the room as a feral mega. He can’t say he isn’t grateful to hear something so essentially _Kipo_. “That is the _only_ time I will ever sing it.”

“We’ll see,” she replies, a little smugly. What a brat she can be, his baby sister. Even so, he currently has no inclination to let her get away with less. “Hugo, you’re squishing me,” she complains.

“Ah.” He lets her down but does not let her go just yet. The dear girl nearly sways where she stands.

She makes a face. In an absolutely _awful_ imitation of his accent, she declares, “No more jaguar business.”

“No more jaguar business,” he agrees. She rasps a very welcome laugh. He leaves one steadying hand on her back and uses it as an excuse to gesture grandly with the other. “Shall we? I imagine Wolf is on our way out, which, incidentally, is our next destination.”

“What, out?”

“You have somewhere else to be?”

Kipo sticks her tongue out at him but presently adopts a more serious expression. “The other mutes are back that way, too. We can get them, get Wolf, and get out. We can rescue everyone!” She raises her fists in an overdone pantomime of fighting, but she wrinkles her nose at the sight of her thin human hands. “I guess I’m just going to have to punch people,” she sighs.

“Leave that to me,” Scarlemagne says generously. “I’ll even behave.”

She looks immediately hopeful. “Really?”

“Absolutely, my dear,” he assures her. “Everything is relative, of course. But for you? Absolutely.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had all this outlined before I saw season three, so we're ignoring that. More violence this chapter. Scarlemagne deserves to use those beautiful teeth.

Finding Wolf proves a very simple matter.

Through a combination of brotherly charm and haste, Scarlemagne ushers Kipo out of the wreckage of the room before she can see the unfortunate assistant, who has not stirred from his post face-down by the wall. If Kipo had the slightest inkling of what happened, she would doubtless delay their escape to attend to a lost cause, not to mention be riddled with unwarranted guilt. Scarlemagne alone enjoys the poetic justice of it; it’s only fair that a man should die by jaguar directly after hitting Kipo with a pipe.

Once they have taken their leave, all they need do is follow the sounds of a struggle echoing faintly down the hallway. Kipo attempts bursts of speed only to wear herself out a few yards later, an approach which makes it needlessly difficult for Scarlemagne to help her along. The commotion leads them into the main chamber. As soon as she crosses the threshold, Kipo does an odd, startled little cross-step to veer away from the dormant collar, which she gives a wide berth as they cross the length of the room. As they near the small box of a control room and its wide-open doors, the voices they follow become more distinguishable, and the concern clears from Kipo’s face. The yelps and cries of pain are adult voices; Wolf is howling war cries.

“You know,” Scarlemagne says thoughtfully, as they listen to little Wolf make mincemeat of grown resistance fighters, “I _like_ her.”

“Aw, yay!” Kipo beams. She squeezes around the chair, the control room’s one item of furniture. “You two are getting along!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” he demurs as they pass through the double doors. They are back in the dreaded specimen corridor, lined with enclosures. A short distance away, two of Emilia’s lackeys, clad in matching jumpsuits, are gamely trying to add one human prisoner to the mix. One has a bloody nose, and the other holds one arm tight against her side; her hand dangles uselessly. Wolf ought to fit easily through the open enclosure doorway, but she seems to be managing an astounding amount of trouble.

“Wolf, I so hate to be a bother,” Scarlemagne lies grandly, “but you’re in the way.”

Both resistance fighters spin about with a start. If they were not expecting their assignment to include so scrappy a child as Wolf, they _certainly_ were not expecting Scarlemagne. Wolf dives between them and darts back toward Kipo. The fellow with the broken nose gives a single step of chase before rethinking his direction. It’s just as well; he’s put himself in the most delightful possible place, which is to say that when Scarlemagne clocks him neatly and with full mute force, he flies backward into the enclosure. Scarlemagne grips the other soldier by the injured arm and twists heartily. She yelps and stumbles, off balance, and he throws her cheerfully into the enclosure alongside her cohort. With a flourish, Scarlemagne plucks the key card from the access panel, and the door slides firmly shut.

He turns on his heel to face Kipo and Wolf and bows. “ _Et voilà!_ ” he declares. Wolf looks nonplussed, but Kipo applauds briefly, pleased with the generous show of mercy.

The dolt with the broken nose stands at the window, hammering on the glass. Oh, that’s very satisfying from this side. Scarlemagne takes a moment to enjoy it. “Not to worry!” he says soothingly. He leans toward the window with a wide, wide smile. “Not to worry; I see you have a bowl of food and a sleeping mat in there. You shall want for nothing!” He cackles delightedly.

“Wolf, are you okay?” Kipo frets.

“I’m fine.” A pause stretches out before she adds lowly, “Thanks.”

Scarlemagne glances over curiously and finds that Wolf is, in fact, addressing him, and looking quite candid about it. “Don’t get mawkish,” he tells her, only half affecting his alarm. He waves a hand dismissively. “You were on the way.”

Wolf huffs, at once back to her usual self. “Whatever. We should get moving.” True to form, she begins stalking toward the exit.

Scarlemagne steals a longing look at the trapped scientists’ horrified faces and sighs, “Yes, very well.”

“No,” says Kipo decisively.

This halts everyone’s forward momentum with surprising efficiency. Kipo has planted her feet and folded her arms, as firm a stance as she can take while wavering with exhaustion. “We have to let them out,” she explains matter-of-factly. And just as matter-of-factly, as though they had all agreed, she stretches out a hand for the key card.

Scarlemagne flips the card between his first two fingers and holds it behind his back, out of her reach, his eyes narrowed. “No, no—Wolf is quite right; we have no idea of Emilia’s movements, and you’re in no condition—”

The key card slips from his fingers, and he whirls to see Wolf slipping back to Kipo’s side. She shrugs at his look of pure indignation. “I’m saving time,” she says sagaciously. “Have you seen how stubborn she is?”

“Aw, thanks,” Kipo replies with overdone modesty. Brat indeed! Key card in one hand, she follows the wall with the other until she comes to the first occupied enclosure, at which point she eagerly begins her own—purely auxiliary, in Scarlemagne’s opinion—rescue mission.

Wolf interprets Scarlemagne’s glower correctly and informs him, “Emilia went that way.” She points back to the main chamber. “Toward the underground.”

Well, that is certainly Schrödinger’s news if he has ever heard it. If it were anyone but Emilia, he would assume they had fled with their tail between their legs, so to speak, at least long enough to give Kipo the time she needs for her charity. Even Emilia’s venomous hatred can only drag her body so far past its physical limits. And yet he doubts they are so fortunate; she is more likely regrouping than retreating, making the most of what functioning assistants remain to her.

Wolf joins Kipo in unlocking the cage doors and directing the occupants to the exit, which is a lucky thing; the smaller girl keeps Kipo focused when they encounter the more disturbing victims of Emilia’s research and hurries her along when Kipo would hesitate for the horror of mindless squirrels. Scarlemagne stands menacingly at the doorway to the control room, bristling at the waste of time and keeping watch for interruptions. His presence, actually, does a fine job of scaring the newly freed mutes in the proper direction, because whenever he glances dourly at the proceedings, anyone who was confused suddenly scampers the other way. He wonders at the sheer number of them. Not every enclosure was filled, but there are enough. Either testing is still very much in progress—a possibility, given the mixed success apparent in some unfortunate souls—or Emilia decided to start small with her genocide. He remembers her driving impatience well enough to doubt the latter.

A distant shout catches his attention. There is nothing to see in the empty expanse of the main chamber; the voices are coming from further back in the compound, faint but numerous voices, all trying to ask questions at once. Emilia and her subordinates have regrouped, and by the sound of things, they have just confirmed the absence of their prisoners.

“We have company,” Scarlemagne announces, catching up to Wolf and Kipo with long, quick strides.

They have worked their way methodically down the corridor, leaving no mute behind. There are only four doors left, but they are four hindrances too many for Scarlemagne’s taste. Kipo’s only reaction to his news, of course, is to attempt a half-jog to the next enclosure.

Scarlemagne begins crossly, “Kipo, would you mind very much—”

“I would mind!” she insists, unlocking the door with particular vehemence. “We can’t leave them here!”

That’s a bold _we_ , as Scarlemagne certainly could. Yet it may be faster to expedite Kipo’s plans rather than reject them. Wolf is right; she is singularly stubborn. “Wolf, have we a getaway driver?” he asks. If someone must be sent ahead, Wolf will be the quickest of them—besides which he doubts that she could support Kipo’s weight should it become necessary.

Wolf catches his meaning. “He’ll be nearby.”

“Fetch him nearer by—quickly. We’ll be,” he adds, firmly, in Kipo’s direction, “ _right_ behind you.”

Wolf hesitates, but her pragmatic mind could not have missed that escaping on foot is a poor option in their collective state. “Hurry,” she urges. She sprints to the exit in the wake of an escaping raccoon. Kipo all but trips over her own feet rushing to the next enclosure.

Everything is a matter of seconds, and they tick by too quickly. The corridor behind them lies bare and empty; Scarlemagne stands at the ready to force their escape the instant that changes. There are three doors left—two, now—

The sanitary white corridor flashes red, and the nearly unbearable wail of an alarm fills the air. Scarlemagne bares his teeth at once. “Kipo!” he snaps authoritatively, lunging for her arm.

Kipo evades his reach just long enough to open the final enclosure. An Umlaut Snäke uncoils from confinement and shoots past her. “Okay, _now_ we can go,” she decides, even as Scarlemagne grabs her wrist and begins to run. She struggles to match his pace, but he offers no mercy on this front. Better to drag her than to be too late.

And yet they are. Scarlemagne is granted a single glimpse of daylight before a metal barrier crashes down between them and the foyer. He pulls at it, straining, but the lock has caught already. He snarls wordlessly, and the sound rings in the quiet aftermath of the alarm.

“That’s bad,” Kipo notes nervously. She puts both of her hands flat against the barrier, and for one moment she is still and focused; then she groans in frustration. “I don’t think I can do it halfway. If I tried, I think I would just—”

“Never mind,” Scarlemagne says brusquely but not unkindly. He is already looking back the way they came, sorting through their remaining options. The lockdown almost certainly sealed off the tunnels; no one would risk a threat gaining access to the burrows. “We are in a terribly small space and I’ve had quite enough of that.”

Something hammers against the metal barrier, and from the other side comes Wolf’s panicked voice. “Kipo? Kipo!”

Kipo summons her optimism again, but it’s a wire-thin note in her voice, discordant against the growing fear in her expression. “We’ll be okay, Wolf! Just get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Wolf protests.

Scarlemagne kicks the barrier viciously. “Now is no time for sentimentality!” he bellows. “Be of some use and _get the damned frog!_ ”

Kipo blinks at him, and he cannot guess at Wolf’s reaction beyond the barrier, though he imagines she is less than pleased. And truly, she does not sound glad when she promises, “I’ll be back!” But she does depart.

“Be careful,” Kipo murmurs, and Scarlemagne cannot tell whether she is that earnestly oblivious to the danger of her own situation, or if her haggard fear is pulled in all directions. In either case, when the quiet proves Wolf’s absence, Kipo raises her eyebrows at Scarlemagne. “Wow, she listened to you.”

“Yes, we have an understanding,” he returns distractedly. He is remembering the layout of the compound. “Can you run?”

She makes an ambivalent noise. “I can try,” she offers.

They run. Scarlemagne very nearly carries her along, in fact, and she is light enough that it makes no difference, no matter how his ribs protest. But even at speed, he holds very little hope that they will make it to the main chamber without incident. It’s unlikely that the compound is much larger than the few areas he has seen thus far; the two of them are vastly outnumbered; and they have lost any real element of surprise or firepower.

But despite the dwindling odds of his internal calculations, they burst into an empty chamber. The sound of their entrance booms ponderously between the plain walls and high, industrial rafters. Nestled among the metal beams is the final exit: the service hatch, nothing but a square slab on hinges situated at one edge of the room. A short ladder is bolted into the wall directly below it, and under that is a scavenged fire escape, rusted nearly through in places, with its own ladder collapsed and pinned to one side. And all of it is hopelessly far above them.

Scarlemagne seethes. The hatch is untouched by the lockdown, as he suspected, but it does not matter. There is nothing to climb. Even he cannot jump that high, and Kipo cannot be expected to do so without the aid of her mutation. He turns on the spot, searching for a control panel, a way up, _some_ kind of access.

“Hugo?” Kipo prompts urgently.

Humans in jumpsuits shoulder their way into the room in a cacophony of footsteps. As soon as they clear the doorway, each of them twists around to bring a crossbow to bear. The eyepieces of their gas masks flash in the light; they are themselves faceless weapons. Their crossbows are loaded not with simple bolts, but rather with darts. Cautious dread climbs Scarlemagne’s spine. He cannot say whether his opponents are armed with more tranquilizers or the formula itself. He has been caught in the open. Were he alone, he would go on the offensive and rely on his advantages there. But he is not alone; Kipo is pressed against his side. “Aw, man,” she mutters as they are swiftly outnumbered.

Emilia appears last, walking slowly; she has to hold her crossbow in both hands, and even then, it dips toward the ground in her wavering grasp. Her eyes blaze as coldly as ever in the depths of the gas mask. She stops front and center of her troops, as her ego demands, and eyes Scarlemagne as though she is unhurried rather than weary and wounded.

Yet if Emilia is not in prime fighting shape, then neither is Scarlemagne. He feels as though… well, as though he was recently crushed between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

“You’re still here,” Emilia says flatly.

He tilts his head. “Now that is insulting. You can’t have thought it would be _that_ easy.”

She shrugs. “I was hoping she’d eaten you.”

“ _Eugh!_ ” Kipo exclaims in dismay.

Emilia ignores her. “Spread out,” she orders, and her masked soldiers obey with utmost caution. They ease around the edges of the room, keeping their distance without obviously putting their backs to the wall. “I’ve learned my lesson,” she continues. “If you want something done right…” She smiles coolly. “Do it yourself.”

Scarlemagne knows this old game. Emilia may embrace the trappings of practicality, but oh, she does love to posture. “And what is it you expect to accomplish?” He adds saccharinely, “In your condition.”

She snorts. “Really? You’re just like her,” she sneers, gesturing—with the crossbow, unfortunately—at Kipo. “What do you expect, that I’ll stop and explain everything to you? I’m not an idiot—”

Perhaps not, but she _is_ talking, and her subordinates slow uneasily without immediate direction. Kipo is whispering, “Get ready. I’m gonna go mega, and then—”

The light shifts in the room, so subtly that he barely perceives it. Scarlemagne searches out the source and finds sunlight slanting high above through the very service hatch they cannot reach. Two figures descend the ladder, momentarily silhouetted in the brightness. Better illumination reveals, unexpectedly, a pair of allies. An idea forms.

He stops Kipo with a hand to her arm. “Wait. There is another way.” On a whim, he asks, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” she replies without taking even a moment to consider it.

He smiles. “How novel,” he murmurs fondly.

With that, Scarlemagne takes his sister by the waist and heaves her with all his might into the air. She is still such a gangly little thing. He cannot throw her three stories up, of course; but then, he does not have to. For one rewarding moment, she is airborne, and no one responds at all. It was almost certainly the last thing anyone expected, including Kipo. He sees in her round-eyed, almost comical surprise the instant Jamack’s tongue latches onto the back of her shirt. She fairly flies upward, limbs dangling.

“Hugo!” she yelps, and then Jamack catches her in both arms and hauls her safely onto the fire escape.

“What are you doing?” Emilia shrieks. “Shoot her! _Fire!_ ”

They try, those hapless resistance fighters. Those who are not too startled to act fire a shaky volley in Kipo’s direction, but their aim is low, and Jamack is already hustling both Kipo and Wolf up the ladder and out of the compound. Before any of the humans can reload, she is gone.

And so: there goes his conscience! Scarlemagne returns his attention to the room at large. Emilia’s frame is tight with rage. Her subordinates are still recovering from their surprise, but slowly their aim centers on him. Chuckling darkly, Scarlemagne executes a courtly half-bow. “Shall we dance?” he asks.

He launches himself to the side in a mad, four-legged dash; the first dart passes through the air where he stood. He twists away from the second dart, fired in a panic by the young man he is barreling toward. He grabs the man by the throat and drags him in the path of the third; the man drops his weapon, kicking weakly, and falls limp a moment later. Tranquilizers, then, and not Emilia’s precious formula. Scarlemagne doubts it is a question of mercy so much as supply. He flings the unconscious fighter at another of his fellows, and both humans go tumbling. When the haler one tries to rise, Scarlemagne takes him by the hair and slams his head definitively against the concrete floor.

“ _Shoot him!_ ” Emilia orders.

Scarlemagne leaps yards at a time, hooting with laughter. One woman stumbles backwards, narrowly avoiding being tackled bodily. Before she can bring her crossbow around, Scarlemagne sinks his fangs into her shoulder and pulls savagely. Cloth and flesh tear away. The crossbow clatters to the ground, and she screams.

Scarlemagne runs his tongue over his teeth and tastes blood. “Wolf, you gem,” he laughs. “You brilliant, brutal little killer—of _course_ I don’t need a weapon!”

They are frightened now, beginning to gravitate together; but fear has made their aim truer. They fire again. Scarlemagne holds up his shield by her bloodied arm, but he’s a little broad to play this game for long. He drops the woman and steps on her ruthlessly as he passes.

The closest human struggles to reload; Scarlemagne lunges for the opportunity. He rips the crossbow from their hands in one violent motion that throws their arms wide and leaves them exposed. He clamps his jaw over their face; the gas mask cracks and shatters under the force. _That_ scream is short-lived.

It is quickly replaced by a ragged howl behind him, and the full weight of a human slams into his back. Scarlemagne grips the arm trying to wrap around his neck and heaves it forward; something scratches his cheek; a woman spills onto the concrete, unarmed but for the dart clutched in one fist. He touches his cheek.

“Hold him down!” Emilia barks.

Too many fighters still remain, and they come at him all at once. Scarlemagne lashes out with teeth and brute strength, but he is growing light-headed and leaden-limbed. Existential panic washes through him. Not yet—not this—let it be only a partial dose of tranquilizer; let the fogging edges of his mind not be the loss of it.

He topples to the floor; the sensation barely registers. Emilia’s boots click against the concrete as she approaches. She pulls from her coat a single syringe filled with a pale gold fluid. Not yet, then, but momentarily. She looms over him. Her face is in shadow; she holds the syringe up in the light. Her eyes glitter. “It’s about time someone did this,” she says.

No—no, he doesn’t want to go back. _He doesn’t want to go back!_

A thunderous boom shakes the very foundations of the building. Everyone falls still. “What was that?” someone asks in a hushed voice.

Something crashes into the roof. The rafters buckle; the ceiling caves, the metal warping several feet down. Even Emilia looks up. There is another jarring blow, and the ceiling begins to split. Emilia turns back to her people sharply and opens her mouth to address them. That is as far as she gets before they are all assaulted with the shriek of tearing metal. The noise is all-encompassing, and a blinding bright light fills the chamber. The humans retreat. Scarlemagne manages to get to his hands and knees and peers up into the light. Far above them, a great, fanged maw opens, and the tortured metal is joined by a deafening primate scream.

“It can’t be,” Scarlemagne gasps.

Song finishes tearing off the roof and flings it aside. Her lips are drawn back, and all four arms are poised to strike; and then she descends upon the chamber like a destructive god. Scarlemagne is briefly enclosed in darkness. He hears screams and the din of shattering concrete, but he feels nothing but a careful pressure and a sense of change in inertia. Sunlight appears in thin lines above him, and Song uncurls her fingers. He kneels unsteadily on her broad palm. Below is carnage—for it is carnage they have made of the chamber. Scarlemagne counts more smears of blood than he can claim credit for. As he watches, Song backhands a fleeing human with impossible force. They are almost certainly dead before they make impact with the opposite wall.

It appears Song has none of Kipo’s compunctions. Funny, he didn’t remember that about her. But perhaps thirteen years as an unwilling weapon can have that effect.

From this height, Emilia is a streak of pale color. She has taken her gas mask off, and her back is braced against a doorframe. She is struggling with her crossbow. The fury in her gaze is palpable even from this distance, and it is not unmatched. Howling, Song all but dives for her. Scarlemagne shouts, but he is in no danger; Song holds him close, careful with her mega strength even as she pounds at the doorway Emilia just stumbled through. Even if Song breaks through the wall, she will be too late; Emilia will have slipped into the underground. Song hoots in frustration but retreats slowly, clambering backward over the compound wall.

There is a not-insignificant gathering in the clearing outside. Scarlemagne scans the assembled beings and finds a shock of pink hair almost at once.

Song lowers Scarlemagne to the grassy ground, for which he is grateful. He doesn’t much care for being carried if he isn’t the one doing the steering. Lio is waiting for him, face pinched in worry. “What were you _thinking_?” the man snaps. He takes Scarlemagne by the sleeve and pulls him off of Song’s hand, which is so unexpected from Lio that Scarlemagne allows it. “What if the demutagen had been ready?”

Scarlemagne searches Lio’s face. That’s fear, certainly, a familiar sight as far as Lio is concerned—but not like this. Or at least, he hasn’t seen this in a long time. “It _is_ ready,” he intones.

Lio’s eyes widen. “What?”

Scarlemagne is already looking over the man’s shoulder. Kipo’s friends crowd her, obviously fussing, despite her gentle attempts to push through them. Jamack leans back against his car with his arms folded. When he meets Scarlemagne’s gaze, he nods respectfully.

Scarlemagne finds that he is hellishly tired and in no mood to untangle Lio’s behavior. He steps forward to find, at the very least, some place to sit down in peace, but Lio stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Lio takes a deep breath and asks in a calmer voice, “Are you okay?”

Scarlemagne looks at him sharply. “What are you doing here, Lio? Shouldn’t you be dithering over how long to leave Kipo in captivity?”

A frown creases Lio’s brow; there is a shadow of terrible gravity over his expression. He hesitates before speaking. “If Kipo’s mutation is reversed, she’ll be Kipo. A normal human girl.” He exhales quietly. “If yours… if she had… Hugo, you would be gone.”

Scarlemagne stares. He could swear that Lio is implying the impossible, but he can conjure no other reason for the timing of their appearance. Song risked her mega form only after Kipo was safely away. They _can’t_ have come for _him_. And yet….

Before he can fathom this, a weight latches onto his arm. “You’re okay!” Kipo says, voice muffled in the fabric of his coat, which is rather worse for wear. She looks up at him tearily. “Why did you do that?”

Scarlemagne gives her a small, enigmatic smile and does not say. But he does let her continue to lean on him, despite the fact that staying upright is becoming something of a challenge.

This last, of course, is why he does not object when Lio gently pushes both Scarlemagne and Kipo toward the waiting car and says warmly, “Come on. Let’s go home.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for sticking with this! You're all grand.

The afternoon rolls on with sun-warmed serenity, much like the handful of afternoons before it. The tension holding taut over the Timbercat village broke with Kipo’s return; it is not a quiet place by any stretch of the imagination, but its ruckus is an ordinary one—irritating, perhaps, but no longer portentous. The lively noise of cats and youths is clearer than ever from Scarlemagne’s new, amusingly upscale cell.

To call this a cell is something of a joke. What Scarlemagne has been granted is an apartment. He lounges in a spacious room furnished with everything he had in his cell and a proper bed besides. Unwisely, there are windows. Only the door is guarded, and that always by a single Timbercat who appears warier than ever at his presence.

Kipo, of course, has lamented this. She recognizes luxurious imprisonment for imprisonment still. “It’s not fair,” she grumbled two days before. “You _saved_ me. And they all know Emilia’s bad. So why can’t they see that you’re _good_?”

Though she is wrong, she is earnestly, touchingly wrong, and Scarlemagne will not correct her. He advised her not to concern herself with his circumstances; he is well aware that she has pushed for compromises already on his behalf, and he won’t have her shouldering more while she is still so haggard. Scarlemagne strongly suspects that such talks have been tabled in any case. Las Vistas has finally received concrete proof of the true threat lurking beneath them; no doubt there will be turmoil for some time.

For now, Scarlemagne reads. He sits near the window with legs crossed at the ankle, carelessly resting the book on one knee. It might make his captors nervous were they literate, but truly, he is simply passing the afternoon enjoying Sun Tzu’s delightful shrewdness. His gaze flickers up at the sound of voices, but his attention is on the page again by the time Wolf appears at the door.

“Follow me,” she says without preamble.

Scarlemagne sighs and closes his book. “Good afternoon, to what do I owe the pleasure, et cetera,” he remonstrates. “Or is this another daring escape?”

Wolf rolls her eyes. “Kipo sent me to get you. They’re having a family picnic.”

“Joy of joys,” Scarlemagne comments, somewhat scathingly. But he does follow Wolf out into the village proper. Apparently, the Timbercats trust her to handle him should he suddenly rebel, and he isn’t sure they are wrong to think so, should she set her mind to the task. On the way, a peculiarity in her wording occurs to him, and he asks, “Aren’t you attending this charming event?”

“No.”

“What’s that, beloved sister of Kipo?” he presses. “Not coming, you say?”

Wolf snorts. “Kipo’s my family,” she says brazenly. She shoots him a defiant look, one eyebrow cocked. “I don’t know about the rest of you.”

“Ha!” He smiles wryly. “Wise move.”

The picnic spot is not difficult to guess. Even among the towering trees, there are very few places that a mega monkey does not stand out. Song is propped on her elbows and hunkered low, obviously more conscious than ever of her size. Before her is stretched a vast, faded blanket, upon which Kipo and Lio sit at opposite corners. Kipo straightens, beaming, and thrusts her plate in the air, nearly throwing its contents in her enthusiasm. “Lasagna!” she crows.

Scarlemagne smiles a little despite his reservations. When Kipo waves him over, it is with the wiry energy he remembers. The color is back in her cheeks, and the instant he is seated, she begins shoveling lasagna into her mouth with alacrity. The scar running down her face is the only remnant of her ordeals, and even that is slowly healing into a flat, shining fissure.

Lio clears his throat. “I’ll get you a plate while we still have some left.”

“I’m not gonna eat it _all_ ,” Kipo protests.

“Mhmm,” Lio replies, neither condemning nor convinced in the slightest. He spoons out a portion for Scarlemagne—which, in truth, is all he is likely to get if he does not make haste. Scarlemagne accepts the fare with careful neutrality. He has seen Lio more often than Kipo since their return, not least due to Kipo’s need for rest and recovery. Yet, too, there is no doubt that Lio has been checking on him, overseeing Scarlemagne’s lesser convalescence as he has Kipo’s.

For his part, Scarlemagne is troublingly unsure around the man in the conspicuous absence of the constant, bitter anger that defined his approach for so long. As a result, he has been a tad surly during their conversations but also fails to send Lio away. If any of this bothers Lio, then it doesn’t show in the small smile that Scarlemagne catches out of the corner of his eye.

Kipo chatters between bites, and sometimes during them, for which Lio patiently reprimands her. Song does not eat; she only crouches low, watching them each in turn with half-lidded, longing eyes—though she hoots cheerfully and sometimes nudges Kipo with a finger whenever the girl looks her way. As disquieting as it has been to face Lio, Scarlemagne can hardly bring himself to look at Song, and only that when he does not feel those eyes upon him. A short time ago, she could have joined this outing in her own form, talking in the energetic way that Kipo unknowingly inherited, close enough to embrace and be embraced; now she can only watch.

So unbalanced is Scarlemagne by these tumultuous thoughts that he loses his cultured grace: which is to say that he drops sauce onto the sleeve of his best coat. He has only two these days, so the competition is quite slim; but that is all the more reason to be disgusted. “Damn!” he exclaims.

“Language,” Lio scolds at precisely the same time Song hollers warningly.

Kipo holds up a pacifying hand to each of them, her expression the picture of aged wisdom. “It’s okay. I’m _thirteen_ ,” she assures them as though that means something. In her perfect confidence, she misses Lio’s distinctly unamsed expression. To Scarlemagne, she says, “You need more outfits anyway. Maybe—ooh! I know—we should _totally_ make you a coat with stars on it!”

Scarlemagne stops scrubbing at the stain to say, “Absolutely not.”

“Aw, why not?” she whines. “You’d look cool!”

“I would look like a children’s drapery set. If you ask me to wear something with _glitter glue_ on it, I will consider it psychological torture.”

“Play nice,” Lio puts in mildly.

Kipo beams to show that she has taken no offense. She continues to Scarlemagne, “I thought you liked wearing glittery things.”

“Yes,” he agrees dryly, “gold embroidery.”

“Then _I’ll_ wear a star coat,” Kipo replies loftily, and Scarlemagne glimpses the possibility that _he_ has rubbed off on _her_. He could not have asked for a more agreeable surprise than to see her enact such theatrical certainty. “Then we can match, except _my_ outfit will sparkle and it’ll have constellations on it.”

There is something in this moment. It’s in the warm, open air, in Kipo’s playful grin posed against his own amused smirk, and in the way Lio turns briefly from quietly watching over them both to gaze at Song. This is a moment for soft music, but as it stands, their only accompaniment is in the sounds of shared food and familiar presences.

That, and the sharp pop of air imploding into a vacuum. Their patch of earth shines brightly for lack of looming shadows. Song looks up from where she has landed on her hands and knees; tears glimmer in her dark brown eyes, and she gives a wide, incredibly Kipo-like smile.

“Hi,” she rasps.

“ _Song_ ,” Lio says as breathlessly as though the name has been wrenched out of him. He scrambles to his feet, ungainly, and pauses only long enough to help her stand before pulling her into his arms. They bury their tearful faces in each other’s shoulders. Scarlemagne can make nothing coherent of their traded murmurs.

“Mom?” Kipo pipes up hopefully. She is standing already, and she dances closer in eager half-steps, pleading for permission to interrupt. Song rests her head on Lio’s cheek and holds out one arm for her daughter in invitation; Kipo all but leaps into the embrace, laughing. And how alike they look, standing so close together. Scarlemagne hadn’t noticed before that Kipo was the very image of Song, but for her mutated coloring.

The notion that Song might have trapped herself in her mega form after such a brief release has eaten at Scarlemagne; so he has no reason now to feel vaguely adrift. He lingers at the edge of something he hasn’t had in—no, perhaps something he never had. Even his first days with Lio and Song were darker and more desolate than he knew then. Compared to that, this is a distant dream.

Perhaps it still is.

Slowly, so as not to disturb the reunion, Scarlemagne places his plate on the blanket and prepares to discreetly exeunt. A hand on his arm startles him to a halt; he did not expect Kipo’s approach.

“Hugo,” she says, exasperated, as if he were being utterly ridiculous, “come on.”

Kipo leads him by the hand to their parents. Lio wraps an arm around his back. Kipo very nearly manages to squeeze herself into the middle of them all, beaming with sheer joy. And for a brief moment, Hugo tucks his forehead against Song’s shoulder, as if he is very small again; in a habit it seems she has not forgotten, she runs her fingers soothingly through the thick fur at the back of his neck.

It isn’t the same as it once was; it never will be. That’s all right. Scarlemagne is quite accustomed to building quixotic dreams from scratch.

* * *

That night, Scarlemagne makes use of the windows in his grandiose cell.

His new accommodations mean that his guard, intentionally or not, is more ceremonial than practical. Escaping into the surrounding boughs is, for him, no more difficult than using the walkway outside the door, and so the whole arrangement suits him perfectly. His one complaint is that he cannot possibly bring along the keyboard and books without a great deal of inconvenience. But it is not a pressing concern; in point of fact, he suspects his belongings will kept perfectly safe in his absence.

Scarlemagne descends to the forest floor in short order. This departure holds none of the urgency or danger of his previous escape. It is quiet and starry out. His mind is similarly clear, though his thoughts move as rapidly as ever through strategic steps to larger plans. He has his direction at last; there are ambitions he has not yet lost.

“Where do you think _you’re_ going?” asks a low voice behind him.

Scarlemagne turns nonchalantly. Wolf lands among the leaves in a crouch, quarterstaff in one hand. It suits her more naturally than the axe: a versatile instrument that extends her reach and movement. And unlike the axe, it does not have a wrong end for her to use; she need never choose in the moment whether to make a lethal blow. Even so, he waits for her to stand to gauge her stance and only smiles when there is no aggression in it.

“I’ve grown weary of Timbercat hospitality,” he replies conversationally.

Wolf levels an impatient look at him. “If you just waited, Kipo would get you out.”

“So that I could tarry at the beck and call of her alliance?” he retorts. “No, thank you.”

“It’s not—it doesn’t have to be like that.”

“Oh? In that case,” he says, more harshly than he meant to, “detail for me the circumstances under which I would be allowed to leave freely and do what I choose.”

Wolf is mulishly silent. Her eyes search the ground between them as if for an answer.

“I thought so,” Scarlemagne continues more quietly, though still with a hint of teeth. “I’m not a _pet_. I will not be kept around.”

When she meets his eyes again, it is with a glare and a set jaw. “So you’re really leaving.” She adds in accusation, “Without saying goodbye to Kipo.”

Scarlemagne purses his lips. That aspect is… unfortunate, but as much faith as he has in Kipo herself, he has very little in either her discretion or her ability to let any matter be if she thought she could possibly help. He has grown very fond of those traits in her, but here and now, he will not let them impede him.

“I thought so,” Wolf shoots back. Her grip on her staff tightens, and she grinds the end of it into the ground. “So this is it.”

He scoffs. “Oh, _please_. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He nearly smiles at her confusion but manages to preserve her dignity. “I will be _around_ , you know.”

“Oh. Good.” She bows her head in thought, and her expression is briefly obscured by her hair. “That would have really upset Kipo, if you left for good.”

“And we can’t have that,” Scarlemagne agrees softly.

“But you won’t work with her.” Wolf is frowning again, but it is more earnest than her usual guarded expressions. “How can _you_ of all people not believe in… in what she does?”

Scarlemagne exhales. “Wolf, I wouldn’t change Kipo’s optimism for the world. But _someone_ ought to have a more practical plan waiting in the wings, in the event roses and song don’t suffice.” He pauses to raise a brow meaningfully at Wolf. “I suspect you know that as well as I.”

She mulls that over, wary. “That’s what you’re doing? Getting rid of Emilia?”

“Among other things,” he says airily.

This vagueness does not reassure Wolf, as well it shouldn’t. She scowls. “If you go crazy again, we’ll stop you.”

He smiles toothily. “Oh, I do hope you’ll try,” he replies. “It would be dreadfully boring otherwise.” He turns back to the remaining yards of forest. Las Vistas proper and its familiar factions are just beyond these trees: mute civilization, fractured and unprepared, mired in lawless chaos once again. Kipo is bound to change some of that herself, of course—but not all. Some things must be built from scratch, and Scarlemagne is finding that he does not object to starting anew. “You will have to tell her for me, Wolf.”

“What, that you’re leaving?”

Scarlemagne gives her a wide, fanged grin. “That I’m coming back.”


End file.
